‘‘it would have pitied any heart to see’. Destruction and Survival at Cistercian Monasteries in Northern England at the Dissolution’, Journal of the British Archaeological

77JBAA, vol. 168 (2015), 77–110© British Archaeological Association 2015doi: 10.1179/0068128815Z.00000000040

‘It would have pitied any heart to see’:

Destruction and Survival at Cistercian

Monasteries in Northern England

at the Dissolution

MICHAEL CARTER

This article is a contribution to the revisionist literature on the monastic orders in late medieval England and their art and architecture. It discusses the visual and material cultures of the Cistercians in northern England in the period immediately before the Dissolution of the Monasteries, demonstrating the enduring popularity of the Order in the late Middle Ages and that patronage of art and architecture continued until the very moment of the Suppression. Evidence is also discussed showing that monks and nuns salvaged property from their houses in the hope that their monasteries would be restored.

keywords Cistercian, monasticism, Dissolution of the Monasteries, Reformation, Catholicism

ON 11 December 1539, Abbot Richard Stopes and the twenty-four monks of Meaux Abbey (Yorkshire) surrendered their house to the king,1 thus bringing to an end the 400-year presence of Cistercian monks in northern England. In February 1542, twenty masons were employed at Meaux ‘to see it taken down’, resulting in the near total destruction of its standing fabric, with stonework and rubble from the monastery used to build the defences of the nearby port at Hull.2 Only earthworks survive of the monastery. Although remarkable in their own right, they only hint at the former splendour of the abbey.3 The lead-covered early 13th-century church has vanished, so too the well-appointed cloistral buildings, and the reliquaries, altarpieces and sculp-ture loving described at the end of the 14th century in the abbey’s chronicle by Thomas Burton, abbot between 1396–99.4 His own monument lies shattered and defaced in the stores of Hull Museum.5 Between 1536 and early 1540, the other houses of Cistercian monks and nuns in northern England were similarly suppressed, a fate which befell all the monasteries of England and Wales in the Henrician Reformation.6

Since the publication of John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments in 1563, English histo-rians, who often shared the religious sympathies of the reformers, have highlighted popular enthusiasm for Protestantism, the many failings of the late medieval church, the cruelty of its persecutions and the monasteries’ decay, decadence and social and religious irrelevance, a scholarly tradition which is arguably best summarised in the works of the late Geoffrey Dickens.7 However, this well-established orthodoxy has recently been questioned. The most notable proponents of this revisionist approach

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to the religious changes of the mid-16th century are Christopher Haigh and Eamon Duffy. Using parish and other local records, they have shown the enduring popularity of late medieval Catholicism across much of England, the imposition of largely unwanted and piecemeal religious reforms from above, and the violent disruption in belief and practice associated with the destruction of images, shrines and the other splendours associated with Catholic worship.8 The assault in the 1530s and 1540s on traditional religion left the contents of England’s churches ‘irretrievably wrecked’,9 with the destruction that accompanied the Dissolution and Reformation contributing to the shaping of an English national identity that has persisted until recent times.10

The revisionist reinterpretation of the Reformation initially excluded monasticism, the historiography of which continued to be dominated by David Knowles’ magiste-rial four-volume study of the monastic and religious orders in medieval England.11 Knowles has never been surpassed in terms of scope and his work remains an indis-pensible resource to scholars of English monasticism. Cambridge don and Benedictine monk, Knowles judged the orders against the ideals and exacting standards set by their founders, and against this yardstick found the late medieval orders sadly lacking, his account of the Dissolution drawing attention to the ‘scanty band of martyrs to the Catholic cause it produced’.12 He also viewed the material culture of late medieval monasticism in negative terms, maintaining that the last generations of monks, canons, friars and nuns ‘had been living on a scale of personal comfort and corporate magnifi cence [. . .] which was neither necessary, nor consistent with, the fashion of life indicated by their rule and early institutions’.13

However, it has been questioned whether this is an appropriate way of judging the religious orders and their art and architecture in the late Middle Ages. As long ago as 1973 Barrie Dobson observed that

15th-century monasticism has been continually assessed by 12th-century standards, the latter the product of a very different age [. . .] Perhaps the greatest danger confronting all monastic histo-rians is their almost inevitable, because largely unconscious, entanglement in the still pervasive myth of general moral decline in late medieval England.14

A recent generation of scholars has followed Dobson’s lead and attempted to free itself from this myth. Rather than being viewed as a period of decline, the two centuries before the Dissolution are now interpreted by many scholars as an era of reform, renewal and vitality, during which monks, friars, canon and nuns gradually transformed their life so as to make it more compatible with contemporary religious practice and society.15 Monastic art and architecture during this period is also being reappraised, with Julian Luxford convincingly demonstrating that the extent and direction of patronage at Benedictine monasteries in western England indicated the spiritual and material vitality of this Order and also the pious commitment of its monks and nuns.16

The present article is a contribution to this evolving revisionist literature. Its focus is the art and architecture of Cistercian monasteries in northern England on the eve of the Dissolution, and the fate of their buildings and material possessions in the immediate aftermath. The destruction was on an enormous scale.17 The material evi-dence for the study of Cistercian monasticism in England therefore consists of ruins and fragments, which can be augmented by contemporary and antiquarian accounts of long-lost buildings and treasures. Often overlooked by scholars, it yields evidence of national importance with which to question long-held historical and art-historical orthodoxies concerning the character, relevance and vitality of Cistercian monasticism at the end of the Middle Ages and reactions of the religious and laity to the Dissolution and Reformation.

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‘It would have pitied any heart to see’

the cistercians and northern england

THE Cistercians were the most successful of the monastic reform movements that emerged in the years around 1100.18 The characteristic austerity of the art and archi-tecture of the early Cistercians has been widely interpreted as evidence of their quest to return to the essentials of the Rule of St Benedict, which the Order’s founders believed was laxly observed in Benedictine and Cluniac houses.19 The Cistercians arrived in northern England in 1132 when Rievaulx Abbey (Yorkshire) was founded. The Order prospered, its dynamism attracting the patronage of leading ecclesiastical and lay benefactors.20 At the end of the 12th century, the monastic chronicler William of Newburgh described the Yorkshire abbeys of Byland, Fountains and Rievaulx as the tria lumina of religion in the north.21 By the end of the 13th century, fourteen houses of Cistercian monks had been established in the region (Fig. 1),22 and there were also fi fteen nunneries in north that had a Cistercian identity at some point in the late Middle Ages (Fig. 2).23 The Order remained proud of its associations with northern England until the very end of the medieval period. Abbot Marmaduke Huby of Fountains (1495–1526) was a prolifi c patron and great reformer.24 In 1517 he wrote to the Cistercian General Chapter at Cîteaux, asserting it was in the northern parts of England ‘where the religion and ceremonies of the Order are particularly preserved’.25

cistercian art and architecture: evolution and change

THERE is an extensive literature on the Cistercians and their art and architecture, much of it concerning their houses in northern England. For the most part, this is concerned with the 12th and early 13th centuries, a period of growth and vigour for the dynamic, reforming and austere order.26 The Cistercians built their monasteries ‘far from the concourse of man’, rejected all forms of feudal income and adopted a habit of unbleached white wool to symbolise their poverty and purity. The Order had a characteristically austere approach to art and architecture, which was enforced by legislation. This forbade all forms of ostentation, including all images (with the exception of a single painted crucifi x), coloured and fi gurative window glass, the building of unnecessarily large churches and the possession of luxury altar plate and vestments.27

In fact, the Cistercians’ attitude towards their art and architecture is more complex than was previously thought. Chrysogonus Waddell has shown that the Order’s legislation was far from monolithic, was reactive rather than prescriptive and was never uniformly applied.28 Moreover, by the end of the 13th century the clauses in the legislation of relevance to art and architecture had all but ceased to apply. In 1289 and again in 1316 the decrees concerning coloured window glass, vestments, altar plate and bell towers were replaced with a general, vaguely worded clause forbidding superfl uity and novelty.29

cisterican patronage of the late middle ages

THE late Middle Ages was a period of sustained patronage of art and architecture at northern Cistercian abbeys. For the most part this was undertaken under the auspices of the father abbots, examples including the impressive bell tower built at Fountains Abbey by Marmaduke Huby (Fig. 3) and the storeys added to the crossing tower at

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Fig. 1. Map showing the location of Cistercian abbeys in northern England

Drawn by Steve Edwards

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Fig. 2. Map showing the location of Cistercian nunneries in northern England

Drawn by Steve Edwards

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Fig. 3. Fountains Abbey (Yorkshire): bell tower built during the abbacy of Marmaduke Huby in the early 16th century

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Kirkstall Abbey (Yorkshire) by his contemporary, Abbot William Marshall (1509–28).30 Scholars have generally viewed this patronage unfavourably. Nikolas Pevsner famously condemned the lodging built at Forde Abbey (Dorset) by its fi nal abbot, Thomas Chard (1501–39), as being ‘on a scale to justify the Reformation and Dissolution’.31

Despite Pevnser’s comments, it is clear that contemporaries considered such patron-age to be worthy of praise and esteem.32 Marmaduke Huby reinvigorated life within his monastery at Fountains, increasing the size of its community from twenty to fi fty-two monks. His reforming infl uence was felt in the wider Order and admired by his brother abbots. In 1517 Abbot William Helmsley of Rievaulx wrote to the Cistercian General Chapter, praising the many good things Huby had achieved at Fountains, including the improvement of discipline, the promotion of piety and the repair of the abbey’s church.33

Cistercian abbeys and nunneries provided spiritual and other services to the local communities until the eve of the Suppression,34 and external patrons continued to enrich the material culture of the monasteries. Dame Joan Thursecrosse of Hull made her will on 17 September 1523, requesting the prayers of the monks of Kirkstall for her soul and leaving the community ‘a white standdyng peic of silver with parcel gilt with rownde knop’.35 Burial at Cistercian monasteries remained valued. In his will dated 30 August 1530, John Maupas of Hull requested ‘my bones to be moldid wtin the sanctway of Swine Also I wit to the Priorse of Swyne one ambling colt foall’.36 The prayers of Cistercian monks continued to be esteemed. On 20 November 1539, just two days before the suppression of Kirkstall Abbey, William Matthew, dyer of Leeds, made his will leaving the monastery’s abbot and convent 13s. and 4d. for a mass and dirige for his soul.37

On the whole, building and other works at Cistercian monasteries in the 15th and early 16th centuries consisted of repair, refenestration and refurbishment.38 This continued until the very eve of the Dissolution. In Aysgarth Parish Church (Yorkshire) is the fragment of a screen (Fig. 4). Now located to the north of the chancel, it is

Fig. 4. Fragmentary screen at Aysgarth parish church (Yorkshire) inscribed with the initials of Adam Sedbar and the date 1536.

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inscribed A S Abbas 1536. The initials are those of Adam Sedbar who was elected abbot of Jervaulx (Yorkshire) in 1533. The abbot was an unwilling participant in the Pilgrimage of Grace, a northern uprising largely provoked by the religious reforms of Henry VIII. This resulted in his execution and the suppression of his monastery just one year after the commissioning of this screen. Abbot John Paslew (1507–37) of Whalley Abbey (Lancashire) was also executed and his community dispersed for their participation in the rebellion.39 Strikingly, the account book of Whalley Abbey continues to record payments for building works throughout the 1530s, and even in 1537, the year of the abbey’s suppression, lead to the value of 30s. was purchased.40 Patronage dating to the 1530s is also evident at Cistercian nunneries. The most signifi cant extant example is the screen commissioned for Swine Priory (Yorkshire) (Fig. 5). It has a hybrid of late Gothic and Netherlandish ornament. An inscription dated 1531 records that it was the gift of the monastery’s patron, Sir George Darcy

Fig. 5. Swine Priory (Yorkshire): screen donated in 1531 by Sir George Darcy, the monastery’s patron

Conway Library, Courtauld Institute of Art

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(c. 1499–1558).41 This evidence of patronage being sustained to the very moment of the Suppression parallels the situation at Benedictine monasteries in western England revealed by Luxford.42

an art and architecture of decline?

A signifi cant corpus of evidence suggests that the fabric of northern Cistercian abbeys was well maintained and the buildings well furnished at the time of their suppression, thus questioning traditional notions of the Order’s decline. Among the forty-two servants of Sawley Abbey (Yorkshire) at the time of its dissolution were the mason Richard Coyre and the carpenter James Wadynton.43 When Sir Arthur Darcy arrived at Jervaulx Abbey to oversee its destruction in the summer of 1537, he said it ‘was as fair a church as I ever did see’.44 The quality of materials used in the construction of Cistercian monasteries and their contemporary style is further suggested by the can-nibalising of late Perpendicular window tracery from Whalley to rebuild the parish church at Old Langho (Lancashire) in c. 1557 and the incorporation of woodwork and masonry from the monastery at the mansion of the Shireburns at Stonyhurst (Lancashire).45 Other instances of the salvaging of remains from the fabric of Cistercian monasteries will be discussed presently. Inventories of the possessions of Fountains, Rievaulx and Whalley, taken at the time of their suppression (which will be discussed in greater detail shortly), also demonstrate the material richness of Cistercian abbeys.46

Yet the Rievaulx inventory records that in the south transept was ‘a rofe all to bebrokyn with the falling of the steple’, which had ‘tomylled down’.47 It is unclear if the fall of Rievaulx’s tower occurred before or after the suppression of the house, but there is other evidence suggestive of disrepair and ruination at some Cistercian houses elsewhere in England and Wales before the Dissolution. When John Leland visited Strata Florida Abbey (Ceredigion) in the 1530s, he observed that ‘the fratry and infi rmitori be now mere ruins’.48 Similarly, in 1535, the church at Garendon Abbey (Leicestershire) was described as partly ruinous by royal commissioners.49 But whether this dilapidation can be taken as evidence of the decay of Cistercian monas-ticism is open to question. Glyn Coppack’s analysis of the planning of the Order’s abbeys in the late Middle Ages showed that the communal life had by and large been abandoned by Cistercian communities, who were now accommodated in private cells, a standard of accommodation more in keeping with contemporary society, and that there was considerable reuse and repurposing of buildings to suit to realities of their monastic life, a possible explanation for the condition of disused buildings at the monasteries mentioned immediately above.50

religious conservativism and artistic innovation

DESPITE this evolution in the monastic life, there is also persuasive evidence of enthu-siasm for traditional Catholic belief and devotions within northern Cistercian houses. Traces of this can be found in Abbot Huby’s Breviary. Although printed, sumptuous illuminations in the Italian-infl uenced all’antica style had been added to several pages (Fig. 6). The work of a competent Parisian illuminator,51 they clearly show that the introduction of early Renaissance ornament into England was far from being restricted to the Court and southern England.52 The abbot died in 1526, but annotations to the calendar that could only have been made after this date show that the Breviary

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continued to be used. Following Henry VIII’s break with Rome, a royal proclamation was issued on 9 June 1535 that enforced the abolition of papal authority in England and instructed that:

All manner of prayers, orisons, rubrics, canons in mass-books and all other books used in churches, wherein the said bishop of Rome is named or his presumptuous and proud pomp and authority preffered utterly to be abolised, eradicated and erased out.53

The Breviary’s calendar has been amended in accordance with this proclamation, with all mentions of pape lightly scored through. Despite such conformity, on the verso of the fi nal leaf of the volume is a metrical inscription (Fig. 7), which reads: ‘Let not for

Fig. 6. Oxford, Christ Church e. 8.29. Opening page of the Psalter in Abbot Huby’s Breviary. Printed in Paris in c. 1520, the borders are in the all’antica style

Reproduced with the kind permission of the Governing Body of Christ Church, Oxford

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Lordshyp plesor nor might to corer ye wharn and mayntyng ye ryt’. This appears to be a statement that further amendments (‘corer’) to the Breviary will be resisted, irre-spective of the ‘plesor’ (pleasure) or ‘myght’ of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, or ‘Lordshyp’. The annotation is probably the work of Huby’s successor, William Thirsk (abbot, 1526–35, d. 1537), who was deposed as abbot of Fountains in 1535, ostensibly for immorality, but more likely because of his religious views, and was subsequently executed for his participation in the Pilgrimage of Grace.54

There was active resistance to the Reformation at several northern houses. In July 1535, Sir Francis Bigod, an enthusiastic supporter of the Royal Supremacy, and his chaplain, Thomas Garrade, a Lutheran sympathiser, visited Jervaulx to preach the ‘trew Worde of God in the presence of the abbott and his brethren’. As Garrade was declaiming the authority of every bishop and priest to forgive sin, he was interrupted by one of the brethren, George Lazenby, who, inspired by a vision of the Virgin in the Lady Chapel of the nearby Carthusian priory at Mount Grace, asserted the primacy of the pope, subsequently signing documents, in the presence of Bigod and the compliant Abbot Sedbar, expressing his support for the jurisdiction of the pope. This defi ance led to the execution of the monk at York in August of the same year.55 The conservatism of the Jervaulx community is further suggested by the rescuing of Lazenby’s head as a relic by his fellow monk, Thomas Mudde, who was to become a noted recusant during the reign of Elizabeth.56 This was far from the only instance of defi ance. Brother Robert Moreby of Fountains was executed in 1538 after stating at the abbot’s table that the commons of Wales were ready to rise in opposition to the recent religious changes;57 the community at Furness Abbey (Lancashire) would not listen to the reformist sermons of Robert Legate, a Franciscan friar, who was sent to the abbey by the royal visitors to preach to the monks;58 a monk of Roche Abbey (Yorkshire), John Robinson, was imprisoned at York for speaking treasonable words (although he denied the offence and was subsequently released).59

This defi ant commitment to the monastic life and traditional Catholic belief arguably contributed to the imposition by reformist patrons and Thomas Cromwell of compliant abbots on a number of houses, including Roland Blyton at Rievaulx in 1533 and Marmaduke Bradley at Fountains in 1536.60 Indeed, religious conservatism and affection for the monasteries was a major cause of the Pilgrimage of Grace, and several northern Cistercian houses were implicated in the rebellion. A number of factors were involved in the Pilgrimage, but a catalyst for this uprising in the autumn of 1536 and its recurrence in early 1537 was the suppression of the smaller monaster-ies and the Henrician assault on aspects of traditional religion.61 A signifi cant step towards the Suppression occurred in 1535 when Henry VIII ordered a valuation of ecclesiastical property, the Valor Ecclesiasticus. The wealth of the northern Cistercian

Fig. 7. Oxford, Christ Church e. 8.29. Metrical inscription on the fi nal leaf of Huby’s Breviary, an anathema indicating that further changes to its text will be resisted

Reproduced with the kind permission of the Governing Body of Christ Church, Oxford

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houses varied enormously. Fountains was by far the richest Cistercian abbey in England and had a clear income of £1115 per year, which was comparable to some Benedictine cathedral priories. The second richest house was Furness, with a clear annual income of £805. The incomes of Holm Cultram, Kirkstall and Whalley were somewhat lower, but the abbeys were nevertheless wealthy and had clear annual incomes of £477, £329 and £321 respectively. Byland, Jervaulx, Meaux, Rievaulx and Roche all had net incomes of between £200 and £300. The communities at Sawley (£147 per annum net), Newminster in Northumberland (£100 per annum net), Rufford in Nottinghamshire (£100 per annum net) and Calder in Cumberland (£50 per annum net) were somewhat poorer, and poorer still were most of the nunneries. Swine was the richest with a net income of £83 a year, but some communities were subsisting on annual incomes as little as £13.62 Commissioners were also dispatched by Thomas Cromwell to conduct visitations of the monasteries. Their intention was to fi nd fault, uncover ‘superstition’ and enquire if any religious wished to be released from their vows. The alleged sexual behaviour and loose living of some monks and nuns which the visitations supposedly revealed was to provide a justifi cation for the dissolution of their houses.63

The terms of the Act of Suppression in 1536 granted to the king religious houses with an income of under £200 and fewer than twelve inmates. In the words of the act, endowments below this level lead to the ‘manifest sin, vicious, carnal and abominable living’ of their communities. On the basis of their income and size, almost all the northern nunneries were technically liable for suppression, but only Baysdale, Keldholme, Rosedale and Sinningthwaite, all in Yorkshire, were immediately dis-solved. Calder Abbey was suppressed in February 1536, the same fate befalling Sawley on 13 May. However, on 12 October, the monks ‘by the good and loving commons of the country there assigned’ were restored and ‘admitted and entered into their house by virtue of the said commons’.64 A monk of Sawley, possibly Abbot Thomas Bolton (1527–36), preached a sermon justifying the taking of arms to defend the church and a member of the community, quite possibly Abbot Bolton himself, provided the Pilgrims with their marching song, the Sawley Ballard, which opens: ‘Christ crucifi ed/For thy wounds wide/Use common guide/Which Pilgrims Be!’.65

Signifi cantly, the Pilgrims marched under a banner displaying the Wounds of Christ, also wearing badges with the same emblem,66 which were given to them by Thomas, Lord Darcy (d. 1537), an emblem he had previously used while crusading against the Moors in Spain.67 He was steward of Fountains Abbey and Swine Priory,68 and his son Sir George Darcy had acquired the patronage of the latter through marriage, where he commissioned the screen referred to above. Devotion to the Wounds of Christ and its associated cult, the Holy Name of Jesus, were ubiquitous in late medieval England.69 Evidence of such devotion at Cistercian houses is provided by the inscrip-tions surrounding the upper storeys of Abbot Huby’s tower which express devotion to the Holy Name (Fig. 8) and a lost stone shield from Hampole Priory (Yorkshire), carved with the Wounds of Christ.70 Cistercian houses and the leaders of the rebellion were religiously and socially entwined. All benefi ted from the general pardon granted to the Pilgrims in late 1536, but the minor role some houses played in the further outbreak of rebellion in early 1537 led to the condemnation and execution of the abbots of Jervaulx, Sawley and Whalley and selected members of their communities (as well as William Thirsk, deposed abbot of Fountains) and the forfeiture of the abbeys to the Crown.71 The abbot and community of Furness, terrifi ed that a similar

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fate would befall them, voluntarily surrendered their house,72 and between 1537 and early 1540 the remaining Cistercian houses of northern England, like those of other orders, were suppressed.

dissolution destruction and dispersal

THE dissolution of the religious houses was generally orderly, thorough and destruc-tive. This was largely due to the Crown’s desire to realise the full monetary value of the buildings, plate, vestments and the other monastic properties that were seized. As part of this process, the possessions of the religious houses were inventoried. As already noted, the inventory from Whalley Abbey survives, as does a pre-Dissolution inventory from Fountains and a post-Suppression description of the buildings and contents of Rievaulx. These show that Cistercian monasteries were worth plundering. The contents of the church at Fountains included plate worth in excess of £509, and a further £16 of plate was in the abbot’s house. Silver plate and jewel-encrusted vestments are similarly listed in the Whalley inventory.73 Even the plate of the small

Fig. 8. Fountains Abbey: inscriptions surrounding the upper storeys of Abbot Huby’s tower. Several express devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus

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nunnery at Rosedale (Yorkshire) was worth £9, and ‘le plate and other jeweles’ at Sawley were valued at £72 2s. 1d.74 All was destined for the king’s jewel house in the Tower.75

Lead was stripped from the roofs and melted into sows, one of which survives from Rievaulx with a royal stamp to identify it as the king’s property.76 Rievaulx was sold to Thomas Manners, earl of Rutland, the monastery’s patron. He was clearly eager to realise the full monetary potential of his acquisition and the contents of abbey were inventoried, listing everything that was saleable, from the gilded shrine of St Ailred to ‘diverse old naylys’. The west window of the church was ‘bestowed to Helmsley Castell’ at a cost of £3 13s. 4d., and the other glass from the monastery was sorted into three sorts, the best to be kept, the second type to be sold and the worst to be stripped of its lead which was to be melted. Even the pavement in the church was inventoried.77

A late sixteenth-century account of the ruination of Roche Abbey by Michael or Sherbrook presents a similar picture of the meticulous seizure of anything of value. Sherbrook was rector of Wickersley, fi ve miles west of Roche, between 1567–c. 1610. Despite being an Anglican clergyman, it is clear from his account that he was sympa-thetic to monks, stating ‘it would have pitied any heart’ to see the fall of the abbey. His uncle had witnessed the dissolution of Roche, and remembered how the lead was ‘cast down into the church’, destroying the tombs beneath. The church was ‘all broken [. . .] and all things of price, either spoiled, carped away or defaced to the uttermost’. The local population participated in the plundering of the house, and ‘it seemeth every person bent himself to fi ltch and spoil what he could’. Sherbrook’s father thought well of the monks ‘and their religion’, but this did not prevent him acquiring timber from the bell tower, explaining ‘might I not as well as others have some Profi t of the Spoil of the Abbey?’. These others included the monks themselves, some of who attempted to sell the doors of their cells.78 The account can leave little doubt that sheer opportunism rather than hostility to the religious life was the reason for popular participation in the despoliation of the abbey.

the fate of the buildings

THIS despoliation inevitably had consequences for the fabric of the monasteries. However, the level of damage varied considerably between houses. The complete destruction of Meaux referred to the beginning of this article was unusual. At the other extreme, the church at Holm Cultram survived the Suppression without major damage. This was because, unusually for a Cistercian abbey church, it not only served the monastic community but was also a parish. At the time of the abbey’s suppression in 1538, the ‘eighteen hundred houselynge people’ of Holm Cultram petitioned Thomas Cromwell for the preservation of the monastic church, explaining that it was ‘not only unto us our parish Churche [. . .] but also a great ayde, socor and defence for us agent our neghbors the Scots’.79 However, the parish was unable to maintain the fabric of the church, which was equal in size to Carlisle Cathedral.80 The crossing tower collapsed in 1600, destroying much of the chancel.81 Subsequent alterations mean that all that now stands of the abbey’s church is the lower storey of the porch added by Abbot Robert Chamber at its west front in 1507 and the six western bays of the nave, which are shorn of their aisles and clerestory (Fig. 9).82 The church at the nunnery of Swine also served a parish, and the nuns’ choir was retained for their use and, as has been seen, some of its medieval furnishings still survive (Fig. 10).83

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There were initially plans to spare the buildings of Fountains Abbey. It was sup-pressed on 26 November 1539, but the monastery was among the former religious houses which were considered as suitable for conversion into cathedrals, in the case of Fountains serving a diocese which was to be carved out of the huge see of York, covering the archdeaconry of Richmondshire.84 The plan never reached fruition and Fountains was sold to Sir Thomas Gresham in 1540, who was still stripping its lead in 1544.85 Nevertheless, the church and many of the claustral buildings at Fountains still stand to roof level, and the buildings of Kirkstall Abbey are similarly well pre-served (Fig. 11). As will be seen, this state of preservation may have been signifi cant during the restoration of Catholicism under Mary (1553–58) when some former monks hoped for the refounding of their abbeys.

At other abbeys the destruction was much more thorough. This process of destruc-tion was often rapid. Robert Southwell was one of the commissioners charged with the dissolution of Furness Abbey in April 1537. Three months later he wrote to Cromwell, stating that ‘the leade is all moltene and cast into sowys with the Kynges

Fig. 9. Holm Cultram Abbey, 12th –16th century (Cumberland). The only Cistercian church in England to remain in continuous use after the Dissolution. The lower storey of the porch was

built by Abbot Robert Chamber in 1507

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Fig. 10. Swine Priory, 12th–19th century. The nuns’ choir remained in use as a parish church after the Dissolution

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marke fyxsyde therto’, that the tower ‘was clere dissolvede’ and that the church had been taken down.86 Evidence of such destruction can be seen at Jervaulx, where the grooves left by the ropes used to pull down the piers supporting the roof of the chapter house remain clearly visible,87 and the piers in the south arcade of the chapter house at Rievaulx bear chisel marks where they were broken at the Dissolution (Fig. 12). The clearance of Rievaulx’s chapter-house in the early 20th century revealed two skeletons buried beneath a fall of stone, presumably those of workmen who were killed when the building was being dismantled.88

However, not all the buildings within monastic complexes were targeted for demo-lition. The gatehouse chapel at Rievaulx was retained to serve the parish, as were the gatehouse chapels at several other Cistercian abbeys in England, such as Coggeshall

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Fig. 11. Kirkstall Abbey (Yorkshire), 12th–16th century. The claustral buildings remained virtually intact until the 18th century and to this day most are at their original height

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(Essex), Hailes (Gloucestershire) and Merevale (Warwickshire).89 John Browne, the fi nal abbot of Kirkstall, is purported to have retired to his monastery’s inner gate-house, and the building has clearly been converted into a dwelling, the entrances blocked using tracery salvaged from the abbey, most probably the infi rmary.90 One of his brethren, Thomas Bertlett, lived at the monastery’s grange at Allerton, which subsequently became a centre for Catholicism until the 18th century.91 The fi nal abbot of Holm Cultram, Gawen Borrodale (c. 1536–38), was praised by the royal commis-sioners for his ‘good services’ to the king, and these appear to have been remembered when his abbey was dissolved in May 1538. He was appointed rector of the parish now centred on the church of his former monastery. His income from tithes amounted to over £100 per year, equalling the pension paid to Marmaduke Bradley, the last abbot of Fountains. Moreover, in June 1538 he was also granted several buildings within the former monastic precincts, including ‘that vault or loft where William Marchel late monk did [. . .] dwell, and one other vault or loft called le Sekeman House [infi rmary] [. . .] and all the orchard and garden’.92 Roland Blyton, the compliant last abbot of

Fig. 12. Rievaulx Abbey (Yorkshire): chapter house, 12th century. Chisel marks on a pier made at the time of the Dissolution

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Rievaulx, acquired the monastery’s grange at Welburn and its associated mansion.93 The new lay owners also frequently repurposed monastic buildings. By the time of the Suppression, some Cistercian abbots were living in splendour; the palatial residences built by Abbot Robert King at Thame (Oxfordshire) and Abbot Thomas Chard at Forde were unsurprisingly converted into houses at the Suppression.94 The lodging of Abbot Paslew at Whalley was similarly converted into a manor house, although it was much altered in the 17th century.95

material possessions: dispersal, survival and preservation

DESPITE the confi scations and destruction recorded above, books, plate, furnishing, vestments and sculpture survive from northern Cistercian houses and the fate of other now lost items can be gleaned from contemporary documents and the antiquarian literature. There appear to have been attempts to conceal the possessions of monas-teries before the arrival of the commissioners charged with their despoliation. For instance, in June 1537 Sir Arthur Darcy wrote to Cromwell, reporting that he had recovered a chalice from Sawley Abbey ‘brybbed’ from the king before the suppres-sion of the house.96 Images were also deliberately concealed. An alabaster panel of the Entombment from Kirkstall Abbey was in the museum of the Leeds antiquarian Ralph Thoresby (1658–1725) in the early 18th century. According to Thoresby, it ‘was supposed to have been an Altar-Piece at Kirkstall Abbey, where being concealed at the Dissolution of the house; it was found about fi fty years ago [i.e., c. 1660]’. Thoresby had another sculpture from Kirkstall which may also have been similarly hidden, a panel of unspecifi ed material depicting the ‘offering of the Three Kings — drapery well performed, it was sent to me from besides Kirkstall Abbey’.97 Three 15th-century alabaster panels depicting the Nativity, Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin, probably from a retable showing the Joys of the Virgin, were buried at Fountains, where they were excavated before 1854.98 At a similar date, a large limestone relief sculpture of the Annunciation to the Virgin dating to c. 1500 was found at the abbey concealed in a wall in the southernmost chapel of the south transept (Fig. 13).99 A 15th-century alabaster of the Trinity, now at Ampleforth Abbey, was found buried at nearby Byland,100 and its good preservation suggests it, too, may also have been

Fig. 13. Relief sculpture of the Annunciation to the Virgin, c. 1500 from Fountains Abbey. It was discovered in the mid-19th century concealed in the wall of the south transept

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deliberately hidden. Concealment of images also occurred at Cistercian monasteries elsewhere in England and Wales. Three alabaster panels were discovered buried the fl oor at Plas-yn-y-Pentre, a grange of Valle Crucis Abbey (Denbighshire) in 1834.101 An early 16th-century oak statue of the Virgin and Child, now at the Cistercian Mount St Bernard’s Abbey, Coalville (Leicestershire), is said to have been discovered under the fl oor of a barn at or near Hailes Abbey (Gloucestershire),102 and therefore seems likely to have come from the monastery.

Dispossessed monks and nuns carried away possessions of their former monaster-ies. In some instances, this occurred with permission. When his house was dissolved, Abbot Henry Cundall of Roche was awarded a pension of 50 marks and allowed to take away ‘his books, and the fourth part of the plate, the cattle [. . .] the household stuff, a chalice, a vestment and £30 in money at his departure’.103 Either by agreement or subterfuge, monks from other houses also seem to have taken away books, vestments and altar furniture; possessions which would have been useful in the priestly lives they followed after the dispersal of their communities. The fi nal page of a printed Missal of the use of York from Byland, which is lavishly illustrated with woodcut miniatures, is inscribed with the name Ricard[us] Helmysley.104 Brother Richard Peerson, alias Helmsley, was a monk of Byland at the time of its Suppression when he received a dispensation to change his habit and a pension of £5 6s. 8d. He was ordained priest in 1502 and the repair of several leaves of the Missal using fragments of an early 15th-century manuscript suggest that he appears to have made good use of the Missal during the priestly life he adopted after leaving the monas-tery.105 Brother John Pynder received a pension when Rievaulx was dissolved on 3 December 1538, but did not survive long. He made his will in January 1539, leaving Thornton parish church (Yorkshire) a ‘whit vestment, a corporax, tow alter cloth and a messe boke’.106 Given the shortness of the interval between the suppression of his monastery and the drafting of the will, these possessions must have come from Rievaulx. Thomas Bartlett, a monk of Kirkstall at the time of its suppression in 1539, left vestments to Leeds parish church (Yorkshire) in 1542,107 and it also seems likely that they came from his monastery. Similarly, another former Kirkstall monk, Richard Elles, left his sometime monastic brother, Anthony Jackson, a vestment and altar cloth in 1550.108 Several other wills and bequests demonstrate the close relation-ships and solidarity which existed between former religious after the Suppression.109 Nuns also appear to have salvaged liturgical plate and vestments from their priory churches. Dame Katherine Nendyke was prioress of Wykeham (Yorkshire) at the time of its suppression in August 1539. Two years later she made her will, leaving the parish church at Wykeham ‘an honest silver chalice’, and the altar of Our Lady at Kirby Moorside (Yorkshire) was bequeathed a vestment of white damask, an alb and a silk hanging.110

English Cistercian monasteries were acquiring printed books until the eve of the Suppression,111 and recent research has shown that their intellectual activities were far from moribund.112 It therefore comes as no surprise that former monks made efforts to preserve intact the libraries of their monasteries. Robert Barker was the fi nal prior of Byland Abbey and he is likely to be the Robert Barker who in 1541 was presented to the prebendary and vicarage of Driffi eld in the East Riding of Yorkshire. He died in 1548–49 and a second Robert Barker occupied the same vicarage between 1558 and 1582. In his will, the second Robert Barker listed ninety-nine named printed books together with ‘fortye other olde written bookes of which ar of small valewe’.113 The

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named books were all written before 1500, have a theological bias and display no evidence of the ‘new learning’ of the early 16th century or Reformation Protestantism. It is highly probable that these volumes constituted a substantial portion of the library of Byland Abbey, removed at the Dissolution and kept together at Driffi eld by the monastery’s last prior, the elder Robert Barker. A similar attempt was made to preserve the library of Kirkstall Abbey. In 1558 Edward Heptonstall, sometime monk of Kirkstall, left Leeds parish church a copy of the Sermones Discipuli (probably the work by Johannes Herlot published in Cologne in 1504) together with a vestment of silver and white damask. To John Hepstonstall’s schoolboy son he bequeathed all the books in the chest at the foot of his bed, together with all the other books in his custody, which had once belonged to Kirkstall, requiring his executors to keep them safely and restore them to the abbey ‘if it go up in their times’.114 Attempts to preserve monastic libraries by displaced religious were not restricted to the Cistercians. Members of the Benedictine priory of Monk Bretton (Yorkshire) attempted to main-tain a communal life after the Dissolution, with at least three former monks and the prior, William Brown, settling at Worsborough Hall, near the site of their priory. At his own expense, Brown acquired thirty-one books from the priory’s library, instruct-ing in his will of 1557 that his books, together with a vestment and other property, should be returned to Monk Bretton, should the priory be restored.115

Edward Heptonstall’s will gives an indication that at least some ex-religious hoped for the restoration of their houses. Indeed, nuns from Kirklees Priory (Yorkshire) appear to have attempted to maintain a form of communal existence after the Suppression, as Joan Kyppes, the last prioress, and four of her sisters are reputed to have retired to nearby Paper (or Papist) Hall.116 The monks of Whalley may also have sustained some sort of community life, an antiquarian source describing how they clung to their ruinous buildings ‘like a few surviving bees about a suffocated hive’.117

The monastic life was briefl y restored during the reign of Mary, when several religious houses were refounded.118 Even though none were Cistercian, former monks of Roche and Rufford appear to have anticipated the formal reestablishment of their monasteries. In 1555 the surviving brethren assumed their monastic titles when vouch-ing for the good character and suitability for ordination to the priesthood of Richard Moresley, a novice of Roche at the time of its suppression in 1538.119 This hope, even expectation, that their houses would ‘go up again’ suggests that the ex-religious did not believe that their houses had been permanently dissolved in the 1530s and this must surely have been a motive for the salvaging and preservation of former monastic property by individual monks and nuns and their community solidarity after the Suppression. It also calls into question the thoroughness of the destruction of the churches and cloistral buildings during their suppression. Clearly, enough was left for individual ex-religious, even the remnants of entire communities, to believe that the repair and repopulating of their monasteries was viable. This belief seems especially credible for Kirkstall, where most of the buildings remained largely intact well into the 18th century.120 Although it is beyond the geographical boundaries of this paper, it nevertheless of note that the chancel and transepts of Abbey Dore, a Cistercian house in Herefordshire, were in a suffi ciently sound state of preservation in the early 17th century for them to be repaired and rededicated as an Anglican parish church.121

However, the reassembly of estates to make the restoration of these northern Cistercian communities viable was never a realistic prospect. As an act of political necessity, the legal validity of the sale of monastic property had been recognised by

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the Marian regime. Indeed, there are numerous instances of religiously conservative nobility and gentry acquiring monastic lands and property. It will be recalled that as its patron, Sir George Darcy, donated a screen to Swine Priory in 1531. Sir George attempted to obtain the lands of Swine Priory after its suppression,122 and also acquired some estates of Evesham Abbey.123 Sir Robert Brandling of Newcastle (d. 1563) obtained some estates of Newminster Abbey and of St Bartholomew’s Priory in Newcastle. This was despite his religious conservatism, which was attacked in a fi ery sermon by John Knox in 1552.124 The material possessions of several Cistercian monasteries similarly passed into the hands of gentry who were to become noted for their recusancy. The Towneley family of Towneley Hall, near Burnley (Lancashire), had been associated with Whalley Abbey since the 14th century.125 Their seat was to become a centre of Catholicism from the Reformation until its sale to the local council in the early 20th century.126 Manuscripts and other possessions of Whalley Abbey found their way to Towneley Hall after the Suppression. These include the set of 15th-century mass vestments (a chasuble and two dalmatics) which are now in the collections of the Towneley Hall Museum and Art Gallery, and the Burrell Collection, Glasgow, which, according to credible tradition, were removed from the abbey in 1537 by Sir John Towneley (1473–1541).127 The set is probably the ‘one vestment of red clothe of gold with an image on a crosse on the bak with tynnacles for a deacon and a sub-deacon belonging to the same’, listed in the abbey’s dissolution inventory.128

The only other English medieval vestment that can be said with certainty to have a Cistercian provenance is the black vestment at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), London, the rear orphrey of which is decorated with the rebus of Abbot Robert Thornton (1510–33) of Jervaulx Abbey.129 This vestment also survived because of its acquisition and continued use by a Catholic family. The vestment was purchased by the V&A in 1902 from Mrs Alice Hedley, and was said to come from the Hexham area.130 The front of the vestment (Fig. 14) has been altered and has a ‘fi ddle back’ form, a shape of chasuble fashionable in the 17th and 18th centuries,131 therefore clearly indicating that it remained in use for Catholic worship after the Suppression. Mrs Hedley’s husband was Dr William Snowden Hedley, brother of John Cuthbert Hedley, a Benedictine monk and Roman Catholic Bishop of Newport, Wales.132 The Hedley family was originally from Morpeth (Northumberland), and appears to have had long history of Catholicism, with a Henry Hedlie of Morpeth listed in the recusant roll for 1595.133 Similarly, Mrs Hedley’s family (Foster of Scrainwood) was also a Northumberland recusant family.134

The Southworths of Samlesbury Hall, near Blackburn (Lancashire), had been benefactors of Whalley Abbey since the 14th century.135 Like the Towneleys, they also became a staunchly Catholic family after the Reformation.136 Nevertheless, Sir Thomas Southworth (1517–46) was one of the commissioners appointed to survey monastic properties, and this role would have enabled him to acquire the cinquefoil windows from Whalley Abbey, which were incorporated into the wing he added to his manor house at Samlesbury.137 A late 15th- or early 16th-century wooden screen which was removed from Samlesbury Hall to the Neogothic Conishead Priory (Cumberland) in the mid-19th century is also said to have come from Whalley,138 but there is no fi rm documentary or inscriptional evidence to prove this.139 However, there is no doubt that ornamental stonework was removed from Holm Cultram Abbey to nearby Raby Cote, the site of one of the monastery’s granges and home of the family

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of Abbot Robert Chamber from the 15th century. Raby Cote remained in the posses-sion of the Chamber family after the Suppression and the house there was rebuilt in c. 1600 by Thomas Chamber (d. 1619).140 The east front’s plinth is made up of frag-ments of a cornice naming Abbot Chamber, and also at Raby Cote is a stone image of the Virgin and Child with fl anking saints (Fig. 15). Sculpted beneath are the abbey’s arms and Abbot Chamber’s monogram, and his name also occurs in the inscription beneath. The post-Reformation records of the parish of Holm Cultram suggest that

Fig. 14. London, V&A 607-1902. Front of an early 16th-century mourning vestment from Jervaulx Abbey, the back of which is decorated with the rebus of Abbot Robert Thornton (d. 1533). It remained in use for Catholic worship after the Dissolution, its shape altered to conform to changing fashions in liturgical dress

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the Chamber family conformed to the Protestant settlement, and the family does not fi gure in the history of post-Reformation Cumbrian Catholicism.141 The removal of such an image with such explicitly Catholic overtones may suggest either the retention of some hidden Catholic sympathies, or an enduring familial association with the abbey.

In other cases, the religious motive for the acquisition of images by local elites is unambiguous. The Rievaulx inventory records that an image of ‘The Trinitie Ower Lady Saynt Margaret’ was sold to Mr Robert Constable.142 His precise identity is unclear, but he is probably the Robert Constable who in 1538 was paying 22s. rent to the abbey properties at Billesdale and Raysdale.143 He is also likely to be the

Fig. 15. Early 16th-century sculpture of the enthroned Virgin and Child and fl anking saints decorated with

the arms of Abbot Robert Chamber. It was removed from Holm Cultram Abbey to Raby Cote (Cumberland)

in the 17th century

Pat Bull

Fig. 16. Cambridge, University Library SSS.8.3. Title-page of a printed Missal for Cistercian

use (Paris, 1515), almost certainly from Jervaulx Abbey and inscribed Chris. Wyvill. The Wyvill family were noted for their post-Reformation

Catholicism

By permission of the Syndicates of the Cambridge University Library

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Robert Constable, whose ex-libris inscription appears in an exceptionally fi ne early 13th-century copy of Roger of Howden’s Historia Anglorum which has other inscrip-tions dating between the 13th and 16th centuries showing that it was originally from Rievaulx.144

Robert Constable was far from being the only member of the northern gentry who acquired and prized former monastic books. A printed Missal, which is almost certainly from Jervaulx Abbey, rapidly passed into the ownership of a gentry family which became noted for its recusancy. Its title-page is inscribed Chris. Wyvill (Fig. 16), probably Christopher Wyvill, the son of Sir Marmaduke Wyvill (d. 1558) of Constable Burton, near Jervaulx. The births and deaths of members of the Wyvill family between 1538 and 1566 are recorded in the Missal. Notably, the fi rst of these is only one year after the suppression of Jervaulx.145 Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries the Wyvills were a prominent recusant family,146 and are also known to have acquired vestments and liturgical equipment necessary for the celebration of the Mass from Masham Parish Church at the Reformation.147 Although its post-Reformation provenance is unknown, the excellent condition of the illuminated Breviary of Abbot Huby suggests that it also survived because it was valued by post-Reformation Catholics, not least because books from Fountains and St Mary’s Abbey, York, were in the library of the strongly recusant Constables of Everingham Park in the East Riding and others were in the ownership of Inglebys of Ripley Castle, near Harrogate (Yorkshire), a family with a tradition of recusancy in the 16th and early 17th centuries.148

Other belongings of Cistercian monasteries survived because of their acquisition by parish churches. Often these churches had historic connections with the monasteries whose property they obtained. Eighteen choir-stalls and their associated canopies from Whalley Abbey were removed at the Suppression to the nearby parish church, the advowson of which was owned by the monastery.149 A screen and two bench-ends dating to the late 15th century are now in Aysgarth parish church. The screen and one of the bench-ends is decorated with the monogram of an unidentifi ed abbot and the initials M H or H W, whereas the second-bench is decorated with the rebus of William Heslington, abbot of Jervaulx from 1475 to 1510. Also in the church is a portion of a second screen already referred to, inscribed with the initials of Abbot Sedbar and the date 1536.150 As was the case with Whalley, the transfer of monastic property from the monastery to the parish appears to have been due to a pre-existing relationship. Jervaulx was a major landowner in the parish and in 1397 Ralph Neville, earl of Westmorland, granted the advowson of the parish to the abbey.151 Moreover, the parishioners and clergy of Aysgarth appear to have shared the religious conserva-tism of the monks at Jervaulx. In 1566 rood images, a pyx, crismatory, oil-stocks, a corporax and a Latin Hymnal were all found concealed in the parish church.152 Parish churches elsewhere in England and Wales similarly acquired furnishings from dissolved Cistercian houses. Basingwerk Abbey (Flintshire) was suppressed in 1536, and the churchwardens’ accounts of the same year from St Mary’s church, Chester, record the purchasing of the abbey’s stalls.153 Screens and stalls from the monasteries of other orders also found their way into Yorkshire parish churches. For instance, fragments of the pulpitum loft and screen-work from the Augustinian priory of Bridlington (Yorkshire) are at the parish church in nearby Flamborough, whereas bench-ends from the priory are at Leake parish church. Similarly, the screen-work surrounding the Bolton Pew at Wensley parish church is said to have been brought from the Premonstratensian abbey of Easby.154

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Stalls and screens were far from being the only monastic property acquired by parish churches. In 1553 an inventory was made of the contents of Holm Cultram parish church. It seems probable that many of the church’s possessions at this time, such as a silver chalice, vestments, bells and altar furnishings had originally belonged to the abbey.155 In addition, the churchwarden accounts of Ecclesfi eld, near Sheffi eld, record the purchase in 1542 of vestments that had formerly belonged to Roche Abbey.156 There is also evidence of the movement of monuments to parish churches at the Suppression. The grave slab of Abbot Thornton of Jervaulx (Fig. 17) is now at Middleham parish church (Yorkshire), and is decorated with the same rebus as the one that adorns his vestment. Currently mounted in a wall beneath the tower, it was

Fig. 17. Middleham parish church (Yorkshire). Monument of Abbot Robert Thornton of Jervaulx. It was removed from Jervaulx Abbey to Middleham at the Dissolution, probably by Dean William Willes (d. 1559)

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formerly positioned in front of the pulpit.157 The inscription on the monument reads: ORATE PRO A’I’A DOMYNI ROBERTI THORNETON. ABBAT’. HUI.’ DOMI. JOREVALIS. VICESMI SC’ DI. (Pray for the soul of Sir Robert Thorneton, twenty-second abbot of this house of Jervaulx). The reference to ‘this house of Jervaulx’ means that there can be little doubt that its original location was the abbey.

The parish church at Middleham was dedicated to St Mary and St Alkeda and from 1477 was a collegiate foundation. Middleham is no more than fi ve miles from Jervaulx and there appear to have been close connections between the college and the monas-tery, the abbot of Jervaulx proclaiming in 1482 the papal bull establishing the college.158 The dean of Middleham at the time of the suppression of Jervaulx in 1537 was William Willes (1535–59). It is likely that Dean Willes was responsible for the removal of Thornton’s monument from Jervaulx to his church, especially as there is fi rm evidence that Willes was acquiring property from the dissolved monastery. An illuminated 13th-century Bible has ex-libris inscriptions indicating its Jervaulx provenance, and the volume is also inscribed with the name of Dean Willes and the date 1538 (m. Wil[lia]m Wille dein of mydilh[a]m anno / d[omi]ni 1538).159 Willes appears to have had conservative (if fl exible) religious sympathies. In July 1547, early in the reign of the Protestant Edward VI, he was pardoned for ‘all heresies &c. committed by him’.160 However, in 1559 he made a traditional Catholic will, which also refers to the relic of St Alkede ‘that is in my chyst’.161

It has already been seen how the glass from Rievaulx Abbey was sorted into batches, one of which was destined for sale. A similar process may have occurred at Fountains. In February 1540 the clerk of the fabric at Ripon Minster (now Cathedral) paid £3 6s. 8d. ‘for c’tane glase bowth at font’ns’.162 Not only is Ripon in close proximity to Fountains, but its minster also provided livings for former members of the monastery’s community. Marmaduke Bradley, the fi nal abbot of Fountains, was a prebend of Ripon. In addition, several former monks of Fountains settled in the town, and one of their number, Christopher Jenkynson, obtained a living at the min-ster’s chantry of St Mary Magdalene, dying in 1558.163 Ripon remained a religiously conservative town well into the reign of Elizabeth. In 1567 a visitation revealed there were ‘vj great tables of alabaster full of imageis’ in the minster, despite their use being prohibited. They were removed from the church by fi ve members of the minster’s clergy, and rather than being destroyed were hidden ‘where it is not known’.164 It is surely no coincidence that two of the clergy responsible for the concealment of the images, Sir Ninian Atkinson and Sir Richard Tirrie, shared surnames with monks of Fountains in the early 16th century: Richard Atkinson alias Ripon and Edward Tery.165

conclusion

FOR so long the late Middle Ages has been interpreted as a period of decline for the Cistercians, and their art and architecture evidence has frequently been cited as evidence of the malaise and sorry state of the Order during the fi nal period of English medieval monasticism. This article has shown this was not the case. Investment in art and architecture by both the monasteries themselves and their external patrons continued until almost the very moment of the Suppression. The Order remained attached to traditional forms of worship and belief, yet the Netherlandish-style ornament on the screen at Swine and the Renaissance illuminations in Abbot Huby’s Breviary demonstrate that the Cistercians remained at the forefront in developments in artistic taste and style.

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It is equally clear that the displaced monks and nuns did not believe that Cistercian monasticism was extinguished by the cataclysmic and destructive events of the late 1530s. Many retained until death an enduring attachment to the religious life. Books, vestments and plate were salvaged by them at the Dissolution in the hope that they would be one day returned to their monasteries should they ‘go up again’. The mate-rial culture of late medieval Cistercian monasticism continued to be esteemed by northern recusants into the early modern period and beyond, thereby ensuring that the Order continued to have an impact on the religious life of the region centuries after their monasteries fell victim to the Reformation.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This article is based on a chapter of my Courtauld Institute of Art Ph.D. thesis and benefi ted from the comments of my supervisor, Professor David Park. A version was also presented to the meeting of the British Archaeological Association in 2013 and I am grateful to all those who commented. I would also like to extend my thanks to Professor Janet Burton, Dr Glyn Coppack and Dr Julian Luxford for their generous comments and advice. I am indebted to Pat Bull for photographing the sculpture at Raby Cote and giving permission for its reproduction. I would also like to express my gratitude to Steve Edwards for drawing the maps.

NOTES

1. Letters and Papers Henry VIII, XIV (2), 670. For the suppression of Meaux and the other religious houses in the East Riding, see C. Cross, The End of Medieval Monasticism in the East Riding of Yorkshire, East Yorkshire Local History Series, 47 (1993).

2. H. M. Colvin, The History of the King’s Works, 5(2): 1485–1660 (London 1963), 475.3. Arguably the most signifi cant material remains from the monastery are the tiled pavements, revealed

by excavations conducted between the 18th and 20th centuries. For the most recent discussion of the pavements, see J. Stopford, Medieval Floor Tiles of Northern England, Pattern and Purpose: Production between the 13th and 16th Centuries (Oxford 2005), 309–16.

4. Chronica monasterii de Melsa: a fundatione usque ad annum 1396, auctore Thoma de Burton, abbate. Accedit continuatio ad annum 1406 a monacho quodam ipsius domus, 3 vols, ed. E. A. Bond (Rolls Series, xliii, London, 1866–68). The building works at the abbey and its furnishings are summarised by the editor in the introduction to volume 3, lv–lix.

5. Hull City Museum, inventory number, KINCM: 2009.1067.6. There is an enormous literature on the Dissolution. Standard studies include G. Baskerville, English

Monks and the Suppression of the Monasteries (London 1937); D. Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, III: The Tudor Age (Cambridge 1959); G. W. O. Woodward, The Dissolution of the Monasteries (London 1966). The Suppression of Cistercian houses in the British Isles is outlined and discussed in G. Coppack, The White Monks: The Cistercians in Britain, 1128–1540 (Stroud 1998), 123–32. The economic state of Cistercian and Benedictine monasteries in late medieval Yorkshire and the prosopography of the last generation of their inmates is considered at length by G. W. O. Woodward, ‘The Benedictines and Cistercians in Yorkshire in the 16th century’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Dublin, 1956). Woodward’s prosopographical work has been superseded by C. Cross and N. Vickers, Monks, Friars and Nuns in Sixteenth-Century Yorkshire (Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series, 150, 1995).

7. Especially, A. G. Dickens, The English Reformation, revised edn (London 1991) and his Late Monasticism and Reformation (London 1994).

8. C. Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics and Society under the Tudors (Oxford 1993) and E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1580, 2nd edn (New Haven and London 2005).

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9. C. Wilson, ‘The Arts of the Great Church’, in Gothic: Art for England, ed. R. Marks and P. Williamson (London 2003), 348.

10. For a discussion of the role of monastic ruins in this, see A. Walsham, The Reformation of the Landscape: Religion, Identity and Memory in Early Modern Britain and Ireland (Oxford 2011).

11. D. Knowles, The Monastic Order in England: A History of its Development from the Times of St Dunstan to the Fourth Lateran Council, 940–1216 (Cambridge 1950); The Religious Orders in England, 3 vols (Cambridge 1948–59).

12. Knowles, Religious Orders, III (as n. 6), 369.13. Ibid., 256. 14. B. Dobson, Durham Cathedral Priory, 1400–1450 (Cambridge 1973), 387.15. Important reassessments of monasticism in late medieval England are the essays in J. G. Clark ed.,

The Religious Orders in Pre-Reformation England (Woodbridge 2002); J. G. Clark ed., The Culture of Medieval English Monasticism (Woodbridge 2007); J. Burton and K. Stöber ed., Monasteries and Society in the British Isles in the Later Middle Ages (Woodbridge 2008).

16. J. M. Luxford, The Art and Architecture of English Benedictine Monasteries, 1300–1540: A Patronage History (Woodbridge 2005). It should be noted, however, that not all scholars are convinced that patronage of art and architecture is evidence of vibrancy in the monastic life in the late Middle Ages; see G. W. Bernard, The Late Medieval Church: Vitality and Vulnerability before the Break with Rome (New Haven and London 2012), esp. 179–80.

17. Fragments of sculpture and stained glass from northern Cistercian monasteries were included in a 2013 exhibition at Tate Britain; see S. Harrison, ‘Dissolution’, in Art Under Attack: Histories of British Icono-clasm, ed. T. Barber and S. Boldrick (London 2013), 30–47. Important studies of iconoclasm during this period include J. Phillips, The Reformation of Images: Destruction of Art in England 1535–1660 (Berkeley 1973) and M. Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, I: Laws Against Images (Oxford 1988).

18. For an excellent introduction to the history of the Order, see J. Burton and J. Kerr, The Cistercians in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge 2011).

19. For an overview of the Cistercians’ approach to art and architecture, see C. Norton and D. Park, ‘Introduction’, in Cistercian Art and Architecture in the British Isles, ed. C. Norton and D. Park, paperback edn with new preface (Cambridge 2012), 1–10.

20. The early settlement of the Cistercians in Yorkshire is discussed by J. Burton, The Monastic Order in Yorkshire, 1069–1215 (Cambridge 1999), 98–124.

21. Ibid., 11.22. Northern England is defi ned as the ecclesiastical province of York. Whalley Abbey, although fi ve miles

south of the river Ribble and therefore in the province of Canterbury, is also included in the sample. For a full justifi cation of these geographical boundaries, see M. Carter, ‘The art and architecture of the Cistercians in northern England in the late Middle Ages, 1300–1539’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 2013), 28–36.

23. The precise religious identity and affi liation of nunneries in the late medieval period is complicated and controversial. Important discussions include the papers by J. Burton, The Yorkshire Nunneries in the Twelfth and Thirteen Centuries, Borthwick Papers, 56 (York 1979); ‘Yorkshire nunneries in the Middle Ages: recruitment and resources’, in Government, Religion and Society in Northern England, 1100–1700, ed. J. C. Appleby and P. Dalton (Stroud 1997), 104–16; ‘The “Chariot of Aminadab” and the Yorkshire Priory of Swine’, in Pragmatic Utopias: Ideas and Communities, 1200–1630, ed. R. Horrox and S. Rees Jones (Cambridge 2001), 26–42. See also E. Freeman, ‘“Houses of a peculiar order”: Cistercian Nunneries in Medieval England with Special Attention to the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’, Cîteaux: Commentarii Cistercienses, 55 (2004), 245–87.

24. C. H. Talbot, ‘Marmaduke Huby, Abbot of Fountains (1495–1526)’, Analecta Sacri Ordinis Cister-ciensis, 20 (1964), 165–84; D. Baker, ‘Old Wine in New Bottles: Attitudes to Reform in Fifteenth-Century England’, in Renaissance and Renewal in Church History, ed. D. Baker, Studies in Church History, 14 (Oxford 1977), 193–211.

25. Plures utique Anglie patres, presertim borealium parcium, ubi religio et ordinis ceremonie convervan-tur. C. H. Talbot ed., Letters from the English Abbots to the Chapter at Cîteaux: 1442–1521 (Royal Historical Society, Camden 4th Series, 4), 244.

26. For an overview of the historiography of Cistercian art and architecture, see P. Fergusson, ‘Cistercian architecture’, in A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe, ed. C. Rudolph (Oxford 2010), 577–98.

27. For the Order’s legislation on art and architecture, see C. Norton, ‘Table of Cistercian legislation on art and architecture’, in Cistercian Art and Architecture in the British Isles (as n. 19), 315–93.

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28. C. Waddell, Twelfth-Century Statutes from the Cistercian General Chapter, Latin Text with English Notes and Commentary, Cîteaux: Commentarii Cistercienses, Studia et Documenta, XII (Brecht, 2002). For comment on the signifi cance of Waddell’s reinterpretation of Cistercian statues on art and architecture, see Fergusson, ‘Cistercian architecture’ (as n. 26), 590.

29. superfl uae novitates et notabiles curiositates; Norton, ‘Table of Cistercian legislation’ (as n. 19), 384, 388.

30. For a discussion of the patronage of these abbots, see the articles by M. Carter, ‘The Tower of Abbot Marmaduke Huby of Fountains Abbey: Hubris or Piety?’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 82 (2010), 269–85; ‘Abbot William Marshall (1509–28) and the Architectural Development of Kirkstall Abbey, Yorkshire, in the Late Middle Ages’, Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies, 1 (2012), 115–42; ‘Cistercian abbots as patrons of art and architecture: northern England in the late Middle Ages’, in The Prelate in England and Europe, 1300–1560, ed. M. Heale (Woodbridge, 2014), 242–62.

31. J. Newman and N. Pevsner, Dorset, B/EN (Harmondsworth 1976), 210. See also the harsh judgement of late Cistercian architecture in C. Platt, The Abbeys and Priories of Medieval England (London 1984), 157–58.

32. The extent and motives for this patronage are discussed in Carter, ‘Cistercian abbots as patrons of art and architecture’ (as n. 30).

33. Talbot, ‘Marmaduke Huby’ (as n. 24), 172.34. C. Haigh, The Last Days of the Lancashire Monasteries and the Pilgrimage of Grace, Chetham Society,

3rd series, 17 (1969), 4–20; C. Cross, ‘Monasticism and Society in the Diocese of York, 1520–1540’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 38 (1988), 131–45.

35. J. Raine and J. W. Clay ed., Testamenta Eboracensia: A Selection of Wills from the Registry at York, 6 vols (Surtees Society, 4, 30, 45, 53, 79, 106, 1832–1902), V, 170.

36. Ibid., 294.37. G. D. Lumb ed., Testamenta Leodiensia: Wills of Leeds, Pontefract, Wakefi eld, Otley and District

(Thoresby Society, 19, 1913), 14.38. For an overview of this work, see G. Coppack, ‘The planning of Cistercian monasteries in the late

Middle Ages: the evidence from Fountains, Rievaulx, Sawley and Rushen’, in The Religious Orders in Pre-Reformation England (as n. 15), 197–209.

39. Haigh, The Last Days of the Lancashire Monasteries and the Pilgrimage of Grace (as n. 34), 89.40. Manchester, Greater Manchester County Records Offi ce LI/47/4/5, fol. 302r.41. A. Vallance, ‘The History of Roods, Screens and Lofts in the East Riding’, Yorkshire Archaeological

Journal, 24 (1909), 173–76.42. Luxford, Art and Architecture of English Benedictine Monasteries (as in n. 16), 210–12.43. J. McNulty ed., The Chartulary of the Cistercian Abbey of St Mary of Sallay in Craven, 2 vols

(Yorkshire Archaeological Society Records Series, 90–91, 1933–34), II, 185.44. L&P Henry VIII, XII (2), 59.45. C. Harwell and N. Pevsner, Lancashire: North, B/EN (New Haven and London 2009), 14, 478 (Old

Langho); 652 (Stonyhurst). 46. J. R. Walbran and J. T. Fowler ed., Memorials of the Abbey of St Mary of Fountains, 3 vols (Surtees

Society, 42, 67, 130, 1863–1918), I, 254–59; M. E. C. Walcott, ‘Inventory of Whalley Abbey’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 19 (1867), 103–10; G. Coppack, ‘Suppression documents’, in P. Fergusson and S. Harrison, Rievaulx Abbey: Community, Architecture and Memory (New Haven and London 1999), 226–37.

47. Coppack, ‘Suppression documents’ (as n. 46), 227–28.48. L. Toulmin-Smith ed., The Itinerary of John Leland in or Around the Years 1535–1539, 1 (London

1907), 118.49. VCH: Leicestershire II (London 1954) 6. 50. Coppack, ‘The planning of Cistercian monasteries’ (as n. 38).51. Oxford, Christ Church e. 8. 29. The illuminations are discussed by M. Carter, ‘The Breviary of Abbot

Marmaduke Huby: Renaissance design and religious change in early sixteenth-century Yorkshire’, Bodleian Library Record, 22 (2009), 21–25.

52. For the introduction and diffusion of all’antica ornament into England, see A. Blunt, ‘L’infl uence Française sur l’architecture et la sculpture decorative en Angleterre pendant la premiere moitié de XVIme siècle’, Revue de l’art, 4 (1969), 17–29; N. Riall, ‘The Early Tudor Renaissance in Hampshire: Anthony Blunt and “L’infl uence Française sur l’architecture et la sculpture decorative en Angleterre pendant la premiere moitié de XVIme siècle” revisited’, Renaissance Studies, 21 (2007), 218–53.

53. P. L. Hughes and J. F. Larkin ed., Tudor Royal Proclamations I (London 1967), 149.54. Carter, ‘The Breviary of Abbot Marmaduke Huby’ (as n. 51), 18–19.

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55. L&P Henry VIII, VIII, 1025, 1069; IX, 37. This well-known instance of opposition to the Royal Supremacy is discussed in Knowles, Religious Orders, III (as n. 6), 368–69; and A. G. Dickens, Lollards and Protestants in the Diocese of York, 1509–1558 (Oxford 1959), 79–81. Also see Cross and Vickers, Monks, Nuns and Friars (as n. 6), 134–35.

56. J. C. H. Aveling, Northern Catholics: The Catholic Recusants of the North Riding of Yorkshire, 1558–1790 (London 1966), 44; Cross and Vickers, Monks, Nuns and Friars (as n. 6), 137–38.

57. L&P Henry VIII, XIII (1), 941 nos 1 and 2; XIII (2), 156; Cross and Vickers, Monks, Nuns and Friars (as n. 6), 136.

58. Haigh, Last Days of the Lancashire Monasteries (as n. 34), 28.59. Cross and Vickers, Monks, Nuns and Friars (as n. 6), 195–96.60. Fergusson and Harrison, Rievaulx Abbey (as n. 46), 175; D. B. Foss, ‘Marmaduke Bradley, Last Abbot

of Fountains’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 61 (1989), 103–19.61. For discussions of the causes of the Pilgrimage of Grace, see Haigh, Last Days of the Lancashire

Monasteries (as n. 34); M. L. Bush, The Pilgrimage of Grace: a Study of the Rebel Armies of October 1536 (Manchester 1996); M. L. Bush, The Pilgrims’ Complaint: A Study of Popular Thought in the Early Tudor Period (Farnham 2009); M. L. Bush and D. Bownes, The Defeat of the Pilgrimage of Grace: A Study of the Post-Pardon Revolts of December 1536 to March 1537 and their Effect (Hull 1999); and R. W. Hoyle, The Pilgrimage of Grace and the Politics of the 1530s (Oxford 2001).

62. D. Knowles and R. D. Hadcock ed., Religious Houses: England and Wales, revised edn (London 1971), 112–28 (abbeys); 262, 254, 271–17 (nunneries). Valuations are also provided in Cross and Vickers, Monks Nuns and Friars (as n. 6).

63. For the offenders, see the entries under the individual houses in Cross and Vickers, Monks, Nuns and Friars (as n. 6).

64. L&P Henry VIII, XI, 784.65. L&P Henry VIII, XI, 786; Monks, Nuns and Friars (as n. 6), 202.66. Anon., ‘A Relic of the Pilgrimage of Grace’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 21 (1911), 108–19.67. Hoyle, The Pilgrimage of Grace and the Politics of the 1530s (as n. 61), 416–17.68. J. Caley ed., Valor Ecclesiasticus Temp. Henr. VIII Auctoritate Regia Institutis, 5 (London, 1825), 254,

114.69. For devotion to the wounds of Christ, see D. Gray, ‘The Five Wounds of Our Lord’, Notes and

Queries, 208 (1963), 50–51, 82–89, 127–34, 163–68; D. H. Williams, The Five Wounds of Jesus (Leominster 2004). Northern Benedictine evidence of the devotion is discussed by M. Carter, ‘Brother Grayson’s Bible: A Previously Unrecorded Printed Book from Saint Mary’s Abbey, York’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 57 (2013), 287–301.

70. Carter, ‘The Tower of Abbot Marmaduke Huby of Fountains Abbey’ (as n. 70); J. Burton, Monasticon Eboracense and the Ecclesiastical History of Yorkshire (York 1758), 264.

71. Bush and Bownes, Defeat of the Pilgrimage of Grace (as n. 61), 330–31.72. Woodward, Dissolution of the Monasteries (as n. 6), 101.73. Walcott, ‘Inventory of Whalley’; Memorials of Fountains, I, 288–96; Coppack, ‘Suppression

documents’, 226–31 (all as n. 46).74. J. W. Clay ed., Yorkshire Monasteries: Suppression Papers (Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record

Series 48, 1912), 150, 152.75. W. B. Turnbull ed., Account of the Monastic Treasures Confi scated at the Dissolution of Various

Houses in England by Sir John Williams Kt (Edinburgh 1836), 25, 32.76. Coppack, The White Monks (as n. 6), 129.77. Coppack, ‘Suppression documents’ (as n. 46), 226–31.78. A. G. Dickens ed., Tudor Treatises (Yorkshire Archaeological Society Records Series, 125, 1959), 125

(1959), 123–26. Sherbrook himself owned a book from Roche’s library; see M. Carter, ‘Michael Sherbrook, the Fall of Roche Abbey and the Provenance of Cambridge University Library MS Gg. 3.33’, Notes and Queries (forthcoming).

79. G. E. Gilbanks, Some Records of a Cistercian Abbey: Holm Cultram (London 1899), 130.80. See the comparative dimensions in ibid., 29.81. Ibid., 138.82. For a description of the standing remains at Holm Cultram, see S. Harrison, ‘The Architecture

of Holm Cultram’, in Carlisle and Cumbria: Roman and Medieval Architecture, Art and Archaeology, ed. M. McCarthy and D. Weston, BAA Trans., xxvii (2004), 239–56.

83. Some older studies asserted that the church at Swine was the parochial nave. However, Glyn Coppack has shown that it was in fact the nuns’ choir, matching the existing fenestration to that described in a Suppression-era inventory; see G. Coppack, ‘How the Other Half Lived: Cistercian Nunneries in Early 16th-Century Yorkshire’, Cîteaux: Commentarii Cistercienses, 59 (2008), 284.

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84. L&P Henry VIII, 14 (1), 587; L&P Henry VIII, 14 (2), 429; Memorials of Fountains, I (as n. 46), 304–06.

85. G. Coppack, Fountains Abbey: The Cistercians in Northern England, 2nd edn (Stroud 2004), 130.86. T. J. Beck, Annales Furnesienses: History and Antiquities of the Abbey of Furness (London 1844), 350. 87. I am most grateful to Glyn Coppack for drawing my attention to this evidence of the destruction of

Jervaulx on a visit to the site in April 2008.88. P. Fergusson, G. Coppack and S. Harrison, Rievaulx Abbey, North Yorkshire (London 2006), 22.89. For a discussion of these chapels and their reuse at the Suppression, see J. Hall, ‘English Cistercian

Gatehouse Chapels’, Cîteaux: Commentarii Cistercienses, 52 (2001), 61–91.90. G. D. Barnes, Kirkstall Abbey, 1147–1539: An Historical Study, Thoresby Society, 58 (1984), 88. 91. A. Lonsdale, ‘The Last Monks of Kirkstall Abbey’, Thoresby Society, Miscellany, XV, 53 (1973),

206, 212.92. F. Grainger and W. G. Collingwood ed., The Register and Records of Holm Cultram (Cumberland

and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society Record Series, 7, 1929), 153–63.93. J. S. Purvis ed., Select XVI Causes in the Tithe from the Registry at York (Yorkshire Archaeological

Society Records Series, 114, 1949), xi; Cross and Vickers, Monks, Nuns and Friars (as n. 6), 171.94. A. Emery, Greater Medieval Houses of England and Wales 1300–1500, 3: Southern England

(Cambridge 2006), 180–83, 560–65.95. Harwell and Pevsner, Lancashire: North (as n. 45), 695–96.96. L&P Henry VIII, XII (2), 59.97. R. Thoresby, Ducatus Leodiensus or the Topography of Ancient and Populous Town and Parish of

Leeds, revised edn by T. D. Whitaker (Leeds 1816), 48.98. G. Coppack, Abbeys: Yorkshire’s Monastic Heritage (York 1988), 11; Coppack, Fountains Abbey

(as n. 85), 91.99. J. R. Walbran, Illustrated Guide to Ripon and Harrogate and Fountains Abbey, 12th edn (London

1875), 110.100. P. Nelson, ‘The Byland Abbey Trinity Preserved at Ampleforth Abbey’, Ampleforth Journal, 23

(1918), 99–102.101. G. Vernon-Price, Vale Crucis Abbey (Liverpool 1952), 212–14.102. N. Pevsner, Leicestershire, B/EN (Harmondsworth 1984), 325.103. L&P Henry VIII, XIII (2), appendix, 25.104. Missal secundu[m] usum insignis ecclesie Eboracen[sis] (Paris 1515) Cambridge University Library

Res. b.162.105. For a discussion of these fragments, see B. Dickens, The Confl ict of Wit and Will: Fragments of

Middle English Alliterative Poem (Kendal 1937).106. Cross and Vickers, Monks, Nuns and Friars (as n. 6), 180.107. Cross and Vickers, Monks, Nuns and Friars (as n. 6), 144.108. Cross and Vickers, Monks, Nuns and Friars (as n. 6), 145.109. C. Cross, ‘Community solidarity among Yorkshire religious after the Dissolution’, Monastic Studies,

1: The Continuity of Tradition, ed. J. Loades (Bangor 1990), 245–54.110. Cross and Vickers, Monks, Nuns and Friars (as n. 6), 595–96.111. D. N. Bell, ‘Printed Books in English Cistercian Monasteries’, Cîteaux: Commentarii Cistercienses,

53 (2002), 127–62.112. J. E. Krochalis, ‘History and legend at Kirkstall Abbey in the fi fteenth century’, in Of the Making of

Books: Medieval Manuscripts, their Scribes and Readers. Essays Presented to M.B. Parkes, ed. P.R. Robinson and R. Zim (Aldershot 1997), 230–56.

113. C. Cross, ‘A Medieval Yorkshire Library’, Northern History, 25 (1989), 281–90. 114. Cross and Vickers, Monks, Nuns and Friars (as n. 6), 146. For a discussion of the preservation of

monastic books, including by former religious, see J. P. Carley, ‘The Dispersal of the Monastic Libraries and the Salvaging of the Spoils’, in The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland, I: to 1640, ed. E. Leedham-Green and T. Webber (Cambridge 2006), 265–91.

115. C. Cross, ‘Monastic learning and libraries in sixteenth-century Yorkshire’, in Humanism and Reform: The Church in Europe, England and Scotland, Essays in Honour of James K. Cameron, ed. J. Kirk, Studies in Church History, Subsidia (Oxford 1991), 263.

116. Cross and Vickers, Monks, Nuns and Friars (as n. 6), 577. For this and other instances of the maintenance of a communal life after the Suppression, see P. Cunich, ‘The ex-religious in post-Dissolution society: symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder’, in Religious Orders in Pre-Reformation England (as n. 15), 235–36.

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117. T. D. Whitaker, An History of the Parish of Whalley and Honor of Clitheroe in the Counties of Lancaster and York, 4th edn revised by J. G. Gough and P. A. Lyons (London 1872), 184.

118. Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, 3 (as n. 6), 421–23.119. C. Cross, ‘The Reconstitution of Northern Monastic Communities in the Reign of Mary Tudor’,

Northern History, 29 (1993), 200–04. 120. The crossing tower was intact until 1779 and the west range also remained roofed until the 18th

century; see the description of the site in T. D. Whitaker, Loidis and Elmete (Leeds 1816), 119.121. J. Tonkin, ‘The Scudamore restoration’, in A Defi nitive History of Dore Abbey, ed. R. Shoesmith

and R. E. Richardson (Almeley 1997), 163–72.122. Woodward, Dissolution of the Monasteries (as n. 6), 83.123. L&P Henry VIII, XIV (1), 904 (4).124. E. Walsh and A. Foster, ‘The Recusancy of the Brandlings’, Recusant History, 10 (1964), 36.125. W. A. Hulton ed., The Coucher Book or Cartulary of Whalley Abbey, 4 vols, Chetham Society, 10,

11, 16, 20 (1847–49), IV, 1023.126. For the Towneley’s post-Reformation Catholicism, see C. Haigh, Reformation and Resistance in

Tudor Lancashire (Cambridge 1975), 89, 293, 318.127. D. King, Opus Anglicanum: English Medieval Embroidery (London 1963), 102; L. Monnas, ‘Opus

Anglicanum and Renaissance velvet: the Whalley Abbey vestments’, Textile History, 25 (1994), 3–27.128. Walcott, ‘Whalley Inventory’ (as in n. 46), 108; L. Monnas, ‘The Vestments from Whalley Abbey’,

in Gothic: Art for England (as n. 9), 411.129. M. Carter, ‘Remembrance, Liturgy and Status in a Late Medieval English Cistercian Abbey: The

Mourning Vestment of Abbot Robert Thornton of Jervaulx (1510–33)’, Textile History, 41 (2010), 145–60. It is possible that an altar frontal at the parish church of St Michael, Buckland (Gloucestershire) includes part of a vestment from Hailes Abbey as it is ornamented with what may be the rebus of Abbot William Whitchurch (1464–79).

130. Source: V&A catalogue notes. It was purchased together with a maniple and two chasubles (V&A 695-1902 and 696-1902), both cut from copes. However, there is no evidence suggestive of the medieval provenance of these other vestments.

131. For vestments of this shape, see P. Johnstone, High Fashion in the Church: The Place of Church Vestments in Art History from the Ninth to Nineteenth Century (Leeds 2002), 108.

132. F. C. Burnand, Catholic Who’s Who and Year Book (London 1908), 22.133. C. Talbot, ‘A Book of Recusants’, Miscellania, Catholic Record Society, 53 (1960), 35.134. J. Bossy, ‘Four Congregations in Rural Northumberland’, Recusant History, 9 (1967), 102.135. Whalley Coucher Book (as n. 124), 120, 517, 850, 940.136. Haigh, Reformation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire (as n. 125), 262, 283, 292, 293, 318.137. A. Emery, Greater Medieval Houses of England and Wales 1300–1500, 2: Central England and Wales

(Cambridge 2000), 572.138. Ibid., 572 n. 6. 139. I am most grateful to Geoffrey Roe of Conishead Priory for inspecting the screen on my behalf.140. M. Hyde and N. Pevsner, Cumbria, Cumberland, Westmorland and Furness, B/EN (London 2010),

90. 141. For evidence of the family’s religious conformity, see F. Grainger, ‘The Chambers Family of Raby

Cote’, Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, n.s., 1 (1901), 194–232; for recusancy in Cumberland, see J. A. Hilton, ‘The Cumbrian Catholics’, Northern History, 16 (1980), 40–58.

142. Coppack, ‘Suppression documents’ (as n. 47), 228.143. J. C. Atkinson ed., Cartularium Abbathiae de Rievalle Ordinis Cisterciensis Fundatae Anno

MCXXXII, Surtees Society 83 (1887), 315.144. London, Inner Temple MS 511.2. Constable’s ownership inscriptions occur on fols 131v and 132r.

Evidence of a Rievaulx provenance occurs on fols 1r, 58r and 111r.145. M. Carter, ‘Renaissance, Reformation, Devotion and Recusancy in Sixteenth-Century Yorkshire: A

Missal Printed for the Cistercian Rite in the Cambridge University Library’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 14 (2009), 139.

146. Aveling, Northern Catholics (as n. 56), 101, 175, 176, 246, 260, 262, 264, 320, 354, 359.147. Ibid., 22.148. R. Sharpe ed., Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 4: English Benedictine Libraries, the

Shorter Catalogues (London 1996), 678.149. C. Tracy, English Gothic Choir-Stalls (Woodbridge 1990), 4, who also notes a further eight miseri-

cords which are almost certainly from the monastery are now at Blackburn Parish Church.

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150. J. S. Purvis, ‘The Ripon School of Carvers and the Lost Choir-Stalls of Bridlington Priory’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 29 (1929), 165–67; Tracy, English Gothic Choir-Stalls (as n. 149), 72. Purvis argued that the screens and bench-ends were the product of the Ripon school of carvers, but Tracy has demonstrated that this attribution is incorrect. Measurement of the screen at Aysgarth by Glyn Coppack provides further evidence of its Jervaulx provenance, its dimensions almost exactly fi tting the plinth for the pulpitum at the monastery.

151. VCH: County of York, North Riding I (London 1914) 200–14. 152. Aveling, Northern Catholics (as n. 56), 21.153. D. M. Robinson, The Cistercians in Wales: Architecture and Archaeology, 1130–1540 (London

2006), 227.154. English Gothic Choir-Stalls (as n. 149), 70–71.155. Register and Records of Holm Cultram (as n. 92), 160.156. J. H. Aveling, The History of Roche Abbey from its Foundation to the Dissolution (Worksop

1870), 91.157. W. Atthill ed., Documents Relating to the Foundation and Antiquities of the Collegiate Church of

Middleham (Camden Society, 38, 1847), xx.158. Ibid., 12, 19.159. London, British Library MS Royal 3 E VI. The Jervaulx ex-libris inscriptions occur on fols 1r and

268r; the ownership inscriptions of Dean Willes are on fols 76r and 283r.160. Documents Relating to the Foundation and Antiquities of the Collegiate Church of Middleham

(as n. 157), 19.161. J. Raine ed., Wills and Inventories from the Registry of the Archdeaconry of Richmond, Extending

over Portions of the Counties of York, Westmorland, Cumberland and Lancaster (Surtees Society, 26, 1853), 129.162. J. T. Fowler ed., Memorials of the Church of SS Peter and Wilfrid, Ripon, 4 vols (Surtees Society,

74, 78, 81, 115, 1882–1908), III, 290. 163. Cross and Vickers, Monks, Nuns and Friars (as n. 6), 123.164. P. E. S. Routh, ‘Full of imageis: The Ripon Alabasters’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 57 (1985),

93.165. Monks, Nuns and Friars (as n. 6), 118, 112.